Music
Intent
At Altofts Junior School, we believe that music should be an enjoyable learning experience. We feel it is important to provide children with a high-quality music education, which nurtures, inspires and engages children to develop a love of music and develop their talents as musicians. This, in turn, helps to increase pupils’ self- esteem and emotional well-being, creativity and sense of achievement.
We also aim to inspire and nurture our children as performers providing them with opportunities to display their musical talents and recognise their achievements by allowing them to share their enjoyment with the school community.
Children will develop the musical skills of singing, playing tuned and untuned instruments, improvising and composing music, and listening and responding to music. They will develop an understanding of the history and cultural context of the music that they listen to and learn how music can be written down. Through music, our curriculum helps children develop transferable skills such as team-working, leadership, creative thinking, problem-solving, decision-making, and presentation and performance skills. These skills are vital to children’s development as learners and have a wider application in their general lives outside and beyond school.
Implementation
At Altofts Junior School, music teaching delivers the requirements of the National Curriculum through use of the Kapow Primary’s Music scheme, which takes a holistic approach to music, in which the individual strands
below are woven together to create engaging and enriching learning experiences:
● Listening and evaluating
● Creating sound
● Notation
● Improvising and composing
● Performing
Each five-lesson unit combines these strands within a cross-curricular topic designed to capture pupils’ imagination and encourage them to explore music enthusiastically. Over the course of the scheme, children will be taught how to sing fluently and expressively and play tuned and untuned instruments accurately and with control. They will learn to recognise, demonstrate and name the interrelated dimensions of music - pitch, duration, tempo, timbre, structure, texture, and dynamics -and use these expressively in their own improvisations and compositions.
Alongside our curriculum provision for music, children also have the opportunity to participate in additional small group music teaching by being able to learn a musical instrument with peripatetic teachers organised by Wakefield Music Service.
Pupils also have the opportunity to join the school choir, which takes part in the Young Voices Concert.
Impact
The impact of Music is demonstrated through lesson observations, reference to the Kapow assessment criteria, as well as musical performances by both individuals and groups of children.
Throughout the children’s time at Altofts Junior School, their musical knowledge, skills and understanding are built upon each year. The units are sequenced so that skills that are revisited, embedded and mastered over time. Pupils will develop musical skills and gain a deeper knowledge and understanding of the different aspects of the Music curriculum, as well as developing their confidence, creativity and interaction and awareness of others.
The impact of the curriculum is monitored through a combination of discussion with pupils and staff and lesson observations in order to enhance the quality of the curriculum and highlight areas for further development.
Knowledge Organisers
Year 3
Autumn 1
Autumn 2
Spring 1
Spring 2
Summer 1
Summer 2
Year 4
Autumn 1
Autumn 2
Spring 1
Spring 2
Summer 1
Summer 2
Year 5
Autumn 1
Autumn 2
Spring 1
Spring 2
Summer 1
Summer 2
Year 6
Autumn 1
Autumn 2
Spring 1
Spring 2
Summer